


Darkness

by Nothing_is_Real



Category: Pink Floyd
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24557998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nothing_is_Real/pseuds/Nothing_is_Real
Summary: Based on Cam's doctor/patient prompt, but not completely.See notes for more em... notes.
Relationships: David Gilmour/Roger Waters
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Completely AU and never happened. I do not own Pink Floyd (duh).
> 
> Cam's original prompt was on a doctor/patient relationship, but since I rarely experience that sort of a setting (not that I never get sick but I just deal with things at home mostly), so there's sort of a... twist to it I guess?
> 
> Also this is very weird what am I thinking but y'know please just bear with me. And that title is just absolute laziness 😂

_How did you first meet him?_

“I broke my leg in a car accident. Had to go to the hospital and get surgery. That’s where I met him.”

_Could you describe him from the time?_

“Well… he was nice. Really nice. Meticulous, thoughtful. Everything I could wish for in a doctor, y’know.”

_How long ago was that from the time he kidnapped you?_

“Maybe a week ago. Can’t remember clearly, but I was still at the hospital. And I saw him everyday while I was there.”

_On that day when he kidnapped you, what happened?_

“He injected me with a strong sedative sometime at night—I didn’t notice, because I fell asleep immediately. Then when I woke up I was in the dark, on a bed in some place I didn’t know. I tried to struggle, but my hands were tied up above my head, and I was dizzy, from the sedative.”

_And after that?_

“Well… he kept me locked up, but he didn’t torture me or anything. There’s not much interaction between us.”

_Did he ever physically hurt you?_

“No. Not that I could recall.”

_Could you detail your escape?_

David opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated as he recounted the time he spent in that dark room, under the hands of that strange, sad kidnapper.

There’s so many things he didn’t tell them.

He was always busy, running around. The lanky figure with that immaculately white coat. He smiled at everyone, thought about everyone, spoke words of reassurance and encouragement. But whenever David looked into his eyes, they would always send chills down his spine.

Perhaps that was what had first intrigued him on the day when they first met. Intrigued like he’d never been before. Those empty, dark eyes seemed strangely out of place on one with such a warm, kind appearance, and David couldn’t stop thinking about them—and inevitably the person who owned them. Whenever he walked in, all of David’s attention would instantly be captured by him. His every word, his every movement. Upon him leaving, David would watch his fading figure and fantasise over it.

And that, he knew, was the source of his misery and his frustration. He was desperate for the man’s attention, but too shy to pursue it. Days spent in silent admiration and mad musings—and he concluded that this would be the farthest extent of his possible contentment.

Yet when one night he laid himself to sleep in his hospital bed, he felt a hand brush over his hair and caress his cheek. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know who it was, for the man’s presence had become so familiar.

Then he felt a tingling sensation in his arm. It was suddenly painful, but only for a second—for he immediately fell into a deep, unwakeable slumber.

When David woke up tied up in the dark of an unfamiliar room, he’d panicked. He couldn’t recall being in a scarier situation in his life.

And he walked in. Sat down next to him and watched him struggle. David had called him a mad fucker and hundreds of other profanities, yet they elicited no reaction. He just stared at him, his gaze empty as always, before finally turning and left the room, leaving David drenched in his cold sweat.

At sunrise David was exhausted from his fruitless fight and his horrified thoughts. He vaguely remembered feeling someone untie his hands before slipping away into unconsciousness.

And that night, when he returned, he’d climbed onto the bed and pinned his arms above his head.

David feared that he was going to kill him. “Please. You can’t do this,” he’d pleaded, quiet and desperate, “Don’t kill me. Please, please.”

A low laugh. “I will kill you. But not now.”

Before David could process his words, he leaned down and kissed him.

His lips were soft, his breath tasted like cigarettes. David had widened his eyes, in a mixture of shock and horror and… was it excitement?

… And things escalated from there.

The next night they did it again. It was mind-blowingly good for David, although he could hardly sense passion in the other man’s movements. At the end of it, he’d laid quietly with the other man, their naked forms pressed together, and he quietly muttered into his ear.

“Is that why you kidnapped me? So you could have a good shag?”

An answer came after a long silence.

“No.”

“Then why?”

No reply.

“You’re goddamn crazy.”

“They always say that.” There was no audible emotion in his voice.

“Why me, of all people?”

The body next to him shifted slightly. “Random pick. There were twenty-four before you.”

David’s breath hitched. “And they’re all dead now, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And I soon will be, too.”

He could nearly hear the other man’s freakish grin. “Oh, yes.” In the dark, he caught a glimpse of his eyes—cold and empty as ever before.

From that night on, David just seemed to let everything go. He’s a smart person; he knew that any struggle would be pointless. And his leg still hadn’t healed completely. It was difficult to successfully escape even if an opportunity should present itself.

And on a second thought, he hardly found himself loathing this strange man who’d kidnapped him. He knew that he should, yet he couldn’t bring himself to. It was difficult for him to sort out his feelings for him. The man was simply fascinating, if he could call him that. In his life David had seen, in the papers and books and movies, hundreds of different and mind-boggling motives for crime. But no matter how he thought about it, David couldn’t sort out what drove this particular kidnapper to his misdeeds. He was just so good at hiding any sort of emotion, and there was simply nothing he could deduce from the man.

He’d tried, more than once, to ask him why he was doing this. Everytime, his reply was just a blank, dead-eyed stare. Except for this one time, he’d said,

“I like to kill. To injure. It’s revenge.”

David tried to hide his own incomprehension in his stare. Revenge? What had he done to him? Or what had others done to him, that he was driven to killing completely innocent people?

Gradually he came to the conclusion that perhaps he did not have emotions at all. He was just a cold-blooded, robot-like creature, detached from the rest of the earth. And the longer David dwelled on this theory, the more convinced he was that it was true. He couldn’t help but feel glum. Somehow, knowing that he was no different from the twenty-four other people he kidnapped caused him an inexplicable sort of pain.

One night, however, everything changed. That night when he came back and stumbled into the room with staggered steps. David didn’t say or do anything at the moment, just continued to stare blankly at the ceiling. Then he felt him lifting the covers and getting into bed with him. The strong smell of whiskey hit him in the nose.

He was drunk. Absolutely sozzled.

A pair of arms snaked around him. Slowly, carefully. As if handling a porcelain doll. And without warning, something cold and hard was pressed against his throat, and David froze.

He knew this was going to happen all along, yet when it actually came, he couldn’t help being afraid. His mind blanked, and he was unable to even utter a sound.

There was a low laugh from behind him, and the blade was removed. It reappeared on his collarbone. David closed his eyes in fearful anticipation.

“You’re nervous,” the other man’s words were slurred, yet they pierced through his ears like knives. “Aren’t you?”

David didn’t answer.

“Gotta skin you alive… but not before… ” a hand unzipped his trousers and clenched around his cock. David gasped at the touch.

“Enjoy it. It’s gonna be the last thing you do before you die.”

He groaned, burying his head in his hands. Being both painfully aroused and absolutely terrified at the same time—a strange combination.

David let him jerk him off until he ejaculated, the warm viscous liquid splattering across the sheets. The blade was still pressed to his collarbone, and now with much more power.

“Please don’t… don’t kill me.”

The blade dug into his skin, and he inhaled sharply in pain.

“Please, listen. Please don’t do this,” panicking, he rambled on with whatever came to mind, “Or, well—please, just tell me why you’re doing this. Why? You long for bloodshed, yet you elected to be a doctor—”

The motion of the blade stopped abruptly, but he did not speak.

“Why a doctor?” David desperately grabbed onto his last chance, although he did, too, wonder this himself.

“Why kill and save at the same time?”

There was a long pause.

“I told you I’ve killed twenty-four people… ”

David felt as tense as a tightrope string.

“... It’s actually much more than that.”

Good God.

“I’ve kidnapped and killed twenty-four people, but before that… I killed people when I was still at school. Before I even went to college, before I even got close to becoming a doctor,” David could hear the other man’s uneven breathing behind him, “Two people… they hurt me… I killed them.”

David tried hard to follow his logic. “So by becoming a doctor, you’re seeking redemption?”

No response. He took that as an affirmative.

“But why keep going?”

He hesitated for a moment, “Revenge.”

Revenge. That word again.

A trembling arm wrapped around his chest, and David somehow mustered the courage to lay his own hand on it. Under the influence of alcohol, and perhaps his own nightmares, his voice was barely a whisper. “They deserve it.”

David contemplated the words for a while, before turning around on the bed to face the other man.

“You kidnapped me, but you kept me alive for at least two weeks,” he said, “I don’t know what happened to you, but whatever it is, you’re retaliating by murdering us—but still, you want someone to hang on to. Is that—y’know—why you don’t kill us immediately?”

Silence.

“Not only that, you get close—intimate—with us. So you just want someone’s presence, don’t you?”

“Stop,” came a muffled reply. Yet that only confirmed his suspicions, and he continued.

“You despise people for what they did to you. But that one night you decide to finally finish me, you go out and get drunk. You don’t want to keep a clear head when you murder. So your conscience… perhaps it’s not so empty.”

“Stop it.”

“You’re just lonely.”

“STOP!”

Instantly, David was shoved back against the mattress. The blade came down, cutting through the flesh on his left shoulder, and he gritted his teeth at the pain. The other man’s face came into view. His wild, dark eyes were open wide, staring at him in a blood-curdling glare.

“Stop. Stop it,” the anger and woe were evident in his voice, and he broke down sobbing.

David sighed softly.

“Look. Let me go, please. If you let me go, I’ll—I’ll take care of you,” he knew perfectly well by then that he wasn’t an emotionless killer machine, that words could move him.

He leaned closer, but his grasp on his arms had loosened. “Fine. But just one more thing,” he slurred.

A pair of lips pressed onto David’s. Like the first time they’d done it, but more fierce, more passionate. He could taste the alcohol in the other man’s breath, and it was suddenly a sweet, melancholy flavour.

“You… you could go.”

David looked up. He never locked the door.

After careful consideration, he gave his answer to the last question.

“He came home drunk out of his head, and didn’t lock the door. I managed to sneak out.”

He'd thought of telling them about the last conversation they'd had, but in the end he decided against it.

Some things would better stay secrets.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm genuinely sorry this took so long. I took like four days to plan, four days to procrastinate, and three days to put this into actual practice so wellllllll this is also very bad but anyways.
> 
> Also note: While reading this you'll encounter an occupation called an "embalmer". If you’re not sure what an that is, it’s basically a person who preserves and grooms a dead body in preparation for a cremation or funeral. This occupation is famous in east Asia (as of my knowledge Japan and China especially, where it is called “納棺師” or “入殓师”). They clean and ritually prepare the body before dressing the dead body in proper clothes and putting sufficient make-up (if needed) on their faces, so that they could look respectable before being buried. In modern society, embalming is no longer performed as a norm, especially not in the urban areas. But it remains a pretty well-known occupation in east Asia, albeit unpopular because embalmers deal with the dead. 
> 
> In this story we're dealing with an AU where embalming is a normal occupation.

David coughed as he opened his eyes. 

_Where on earth am I?_ he wondered as he surveyed his surroundings. White floor, white walls. Flickering fluorescent lights. Closed doors to both his left and right in the corridor. Faint smell of disinfectant.

A hospital?

He got up to his feet, his movements slow and clumsy. The lights dimmed for a moment, and there he heard it—footsteps. Footsteps echoing in the hallways, coming towards him. 

He approached a door carefully, twisting the knob to open it. It’s locked. He tried another; locked as well.

The footsteps were getting even closer, and David could feel his pulse quickening. He bit his lips in panic as he tried a third and a fourth door, all in vain. 

Was he trapped?

He turned around just in time to see a hooded figure round the corner. Instantly his head exploded, and without any further thought he just took off running. 

Yet it was no use. Though his footsteps did not seem to quicken, the figure advanced on him at a shocking speed, one that David could not outrun whatsoever. When a shadow was cast over his head, he was momentarily paralysed with fear and stumbled over his own foot, falling to the ground painfully.

When he looked up, he saw a cane of some sort swing down at him. David opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out, and he could only watch it get closer and closer to hitting him in the head—

“NO!”

David sat up, gasping for breath, clenching the sheets as if holding on to dear life. Cold sweat drenched his shirt and made his hair stick to his forehead and his neck. 

He rubbed his temple and laid back, trying to slow his breathing. He’d been having this nightmare—the same one, over and over again, for the past five nights. It haunted him every night in his sleep and woke him up halfway through dawn, leaving him horrified and restless in the dark. 

He wasn’t sure what exactly was triggering those nightmares, but he had a pretty good guess. 

_He_ died. David saw it in the papers, exactly five days ago. Committed suicide in prison. David didn’t know if he was happy about it or not—indeed his escape had helped the police track down a serial killer, but he felt as if there was an invisible thread connecting the two of them. When he died, part of him died, too.

And then the nightmares began.

Instead of trying to go back to sleep, David sat awake in his bed, wiping his sweat with the back of his hand. 

He had to think of some way for this to stop. Even though it had only been five days, he had a strange premonition that it was going to haunt it for the rest of his life. That would be dreadful.

So this is how, six hours later in the morning, he found himself at his friend Nick’s apartment.

“You got to help me, Nick,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“... Dave. Just because I’m an embalmer, doesn’t mean I can just go around and steal autopsied bodies. Especially the body of a prisoner.”

“I know. But please, could you try?”

“What are we going to do with the body afterwards, then?”

David bit his lip. He didn’t quite think about that. “Burn it. Bury it. Whatever. I just want him to go looking… respectable.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Nick sighed and relented. “Fine. I’m not promising anything, though.”

David’s eyes lit up. “Thank you. God. Thank you so much.”

“Of course, mate,” Nick patted him in the shoulder, “Although, I gotta warn you… don’t get too attached. He may look like he’s alive, but he’s dead. And always will be.”

“I won’t.”

_Two days later..._

“Are you going to watch?”

Nick and David stood together in the room. The curtains were drawn, the lights were low. It felt like they were performing some sort of dark ritual. Nobody else needed to know.

David rubbed his chin. “Yeah.”

“Alright, then. You’re only allowed to watch, though. Don’t touch.”

With one last look at his friend, Nick put on a surgical mask and a pair of gloves, before lifting the white sheets that covered the body.

Although he was expecting this all along, David’s breath hitched nevertheless when that familiar face came into view before him. The pale skin, the long nose, the pretty dark hair. He had not lost his charm, even in death. 

The embalming process seemed to go on for hours. David watched as Nick worked with the body. Cleaning the skin. Injecting disinfectant. Dressing him in proper clothes. Applying any necessary makeup. He was careful, meticulous, and David was suddenly reminded of this dead person before him when he was alive.

It was part of an embalmer’s job to respect the dead, no matter who the dead was. And in his head David expressed his silent gratitude for Nick. Nick probably felt he was crazy, thinking that embalming a dead serial killer would stop his nightmares. And it must’ve been a hard task for him, smuggling a body out of a prison lab, and carrying it all the way here. But he helped him nonetheless.

Finally, Nick stepped back.

“It’s done.”

David nodded, numbly.

“Anything you’d like to say to him?”

“Uh… what?”

“Oh, come on. Like, ‘could you stop haunting me in my dreams,’ or something.”

David would have laughed if it weren’t for the current situation they were in. “Yeah. Could you please… leave, for a moment?”

Nick looked at him for a long time, before nodding and taking off his mask. “Okay. Remember, don’t touch the body,” he said, as he opened the door and was about to leave.

“Right.”

When the door finally closed, David immediately broke the one and only rule Nick set for him.

He clasped the hand of the dead body, of this doctor, this kidnapper, this ruthless serial killer who decided to let him go. 

“Hey, I hope you can hear me,” he began, but immediately blanked out of things to say.

For a moment he felt guilt for going to the police and turning him in. He’d promised to take care of him, and he didn’t.

“I’m sorry… ”

The dim light on the ceiling flickered. David blinked, and the guilt vanished. He’d done the right thing. He’d stopped a trail of slaughter, saved people from dying in the future. And he’d ended a repeating cycle of guilt and vengeance and torture that was rooted deep in this man’s heart. Yes, he’d done the right thing.

“Please don’t hate me. Maybe that’s a lot to ask. I broke my promise to you, but,” he paused, “I was wondering… is suicide, like, redemption for you?”

He knew that only death could offer him escape from his affliction. So perhaps this peaceful slumber was where he belonged. Perhaps that’s where everyone belonged, for everyone was going to end up there anyways.

“The most I can do for you… I guess, is to send you off. Right here, right now.”

He closed his eyes and planted a kiss on the dead man’s forehead.

“I’ll see you on the other side, Roger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Em thanks for reading. 
> 
> Also wow I finally mentioned Roger's name at the end of this chapter (idk why but I never put his name anywhere previously).

**Author's Note:**

> This is semi-based on something that my friend told me about (particularly the escape part). I'm not 100% sure it was a true story, but there were records documenting things of the kind. This story is fictional though, and please don't imitate in real life.
> 
> Hope you liked :)


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